One of the boats of the harbor squad was summoned to the foot of West Fourteenth Street from Pier A, after a brief consultation, and in half an hour more the little party was in full pursuit.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE FUGITIVES GET A SHOCK.
The low cabin of the canal boat Mary Jane was aft. Nearly an hour and a half after leaving the dock, Grantley and Siebold were sitting just forward of the cabin, on a couple of coils of rope. Their heads were thus below the level of the low roof.
They were conversing in low, guarded tones in order not to be overheard by the captain and hands.
“I’ll confess now,” the younger of the two was saying, “that I never expected to get away from those cursed detectives so easily. It seems almost too good to be true.”
“Pooh!” sneered Grantley. “Like almost everybody else, including those who ought to know better, you have let yourself believe that Carter and his crowd come somewhere near living up to their newspaper reputations. That’s plain nonsense. They don’t. They’re greatly overrated. The detectives of fiction and those of fact are two very different propositions. I’ll admit that Nick Carter is a great deal cleverer than the police, but that isn’t saying much. He’s unusually lucky, too, and that accounts for most of his success, such as it has been. But I haven’t been afraid of him for a moment. Neither he nor anybody else could follow the trail we took, and nobody will think of looking for us on a canal boat. The idea that we would deliberately choose such an infernally slow means of transit will never occur to our enemies, confound them! We’re as safe right now as if we were five thousand miles from New York. And we certainly did a good job. I almost wish I’d left Baldwin with enough mind to realize what had happened to him. I was a little too thorough. When they try the X rays on him, as they undoubtedly will, they will find his cranium absolutely empty. It will be a vast surprise to Vanderpool and the rest of the tribe of medical nincompoops. They’ll stand around in open-mouthed amazement, wondering how he can remain alive after such an operation. I set out to show them something, and I have done it, but I’m sorry now that I didn’t make a little more artistic job of it. I could have removed just enough of his brain to make him a mental wreck, and yet left enough to cause him the greatest anguish of mind over his condition. As it is now, he is nothing but an empty hulk, without intelligence enough to feed or dress himself. He’s deprived of everything but physical sensations, and most of those are missing or robbed of their greatest intensity.”
“I see what you mean, but I wouldn’t worry about that,” returned Siebold. “Your revenge is a thousand times better than killing would have been, and even if you haven’t left him with the power to think, you’ve given the others enough to think about. I’d have given a good deal to see Carter’s face when he opened that envelope and found the pieces of Baldwin’s check. I’ll wager that stumped him. He’ll puzzle over that until he’s black in the face, and never guess your motive for turning down all that money. Even if he knew about Felix Simmons he wouldn’t see through the rest—and he’ll never know about Simmons. It’s fortunate that Simmons——”
The speaker paused abruptly, and he and Grantley looked at each other with a start of apprehension.
They had overheard one of the men on the barge calling to another as he pointed beyond the stern of the unwieldy craft, down the river.
“Look at that police boat footing it up this way, Tim!” were the words that had come to their ears. “Wonder what the cops are up to now?”